Valuing Amateur Virtues in a Professional Army: Elizabeth Samet

When I first saw “Army of Shadows,” Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 film about the

Later, watching Melville’s film in the company of cadets, I began to see more. My students are preparing to become professional soldiers; “Army of Shadows” is a tale of amateurs. It depicts a network of civilian fighters poorly equipped, largely untrained, unable fully to trust even their closest comrades. One member of the cell is a veteran of the French Foreign Legion, two others served together on a bomber crew, but the leader, the film’s protagonist, Philippe Gerbier, worked as a civil engineer before the war. And the chief of the organization is a cloistered philosopher -- a man whose value lies in the fact that he “knows nothing about weapons.”